


Hope Deferred (Never Knew Such Silence)

by c3mf



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Allusions to abuse/murder, Angst, F/M, Ghosts, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-12 06:15:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c3mf/pseuds/c3mf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The living don't necessarily lead lonelier lives if the dead still feel.</p><p>Written for the Cabin Pressure fic meme <a href="http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/4885.html?thread=7441429#cmt7441429">here</a>. </p><p> </p><p>  <span class="small">First time writing anything more than vaguely smutty. If it needs a lesser/greater warning, please let me know.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope Deferred (Never Knew Such Silence)

_Now the day is over,_  
night is drawing nigh,  
shadows of the evening  
steal across the sky. 

~*~

_Honolulu HI, 1962_

For someone who had never seen the ocean for most of her life, Anna Lowry finds living on the island is a marvel, with its white-sand beaches and crystal-clear water. It’s nothing short of paradise. Everything about it is wonderful and exotic and absolutely perfect. It isn’t conventional, but she’s always been a bit different and has always wanted to escape her small town, where everyone knows everyone and all the secrets, where everyone smiles and never says a damn word except behind one another’s backs. It’s positively vile. 

Her big break comes when she meets an out-of-towner with big ideas of moving up in the world in his head, and a back pocket full of cash. She knows he’s her only chance. She makes her getaway with a plane ticket and a ring on her finger. It’s a shotgun wedding, no frills, no fancy sendoffs, just a hastily packed suitcase and the wide open road. A future of possibilities stretch endlessly ahead, leaving her giddy, and it’s fantastic.

The future ends three weeks later with a stranger’s hands around her throat, choking out her husband’s name and drumming her heels against the mattress. 

When she opens her eyes again and sees herself sprawled on the bed with heavy limbs and vacant eyes, she knows paradise is lost and the forever she had promised on her wedding day had simply been the beginning of the end.

Grief seeps through every inch of the house. The longer her husband stays, the worse he gets, until finally he doesn’t leave their bedroom for days on end, burying himself into the blankets and desperately trying to find her scent lingering on the pillows. 

She doesn’t blame him when leaves.

The house is bought and sold time and time again. She remains behind until slowly everything familiar disappears. Throughout it all, she hides herself in the eaves, ducks around corners, and creeps through the halls over floorboards that no longer groan under her feet and passed mirrors that never throw back her reflection. 

She adapts well enough, she supposes, because she has never found change particularly daunting. This is the biggest change she’ll ever find. The biggest and the last, so she might as well make the most of it. 

Even years later, the pain is still fresh. Time has done little to dull the edge, so when memory stirs, it’s not remembering, it’s reliving, all the sudden violence, the malice glimmering in a pair of unfamiliar eyes and the corded-steel strength of calloused hands. It hurts just like the first time, until all that’s left of her is the paralyzing fear that steals her breath away. She chokes and she cries and the gaping blackness of the void rushes up to meet her. When she opens her eyes and finds herself staring up at the ceiling of the bedroom that had once been hers, she sobs until her voice cracks and her tears run dry.

Yet even as the pain echoes through her, it’s not the reliving that tears her apart. What bothers her most is that, even after all this time, she still doesn’t know why.

Eventually, when she becomes sick of waking up on her deathbed, she reconciles she never will.

That’s when she decides to stop hiding.

~*~

_Jesus, give the weary_  
calm and sweet repose;  
with Thy tend'rest blessing  
may mine eyelids close. 

~*~

_Grant to little children_  
visions bright of Thee;  
guard the sailors tossing  
on the deep, blue sea. 

~*~

_Honolulu HI, 1981_

Aircraft malfunctions aren’t the kind of circumstances Douglas favors when making a landing. Which is why his captain takes it from him and guides them all safely to the runway with nary a turbulent twitch. He tries not to chafe at being so blatantly outranked. No matter how wet behind the ears his captain may think he is, this is hardly his first flight out of the academy. But if life has taught him anything it’s when to pick his battles, and this is one that would only result in a lengthy argument, followed by a swift dressing down, both of which he doesn’t have the patience to deal with right now. So he keeps his mouth shut throughout the post-landing checks and through the talks with the engineers, and when he’s finally dismissed, he heads for the first bar he can find.

The first drink is to calm his nerves and keep him from murdering the first person who speaks to him. The second is to make him forget all about the empty space where his wedding ring should be. 

Six months out and it still pulls at his nerves at the most unexpected times, and for the life of him he can’t figure out why. The divorce hadn’t been a shock (though it had stung that Evie had been the one to bring it up). Neither of them had been spectacularly unhappy, but the charm of med school had long since worn off for Douglas whilst Evie pursued it with a ruthless, single-minded determination that at times was downright frightening. Her drive was simultaneously admirable and appalling.

By the time Douglas had come up with a plan for himself and applied to the aviation academy, it was clear they were running in completely opposite directions and neither of them had ever stopped to consider how much effort it would take to factor the other into their quickly diverging lives. They were losing each other and were too stubborn to come out and admit it.

Time eventually did that for them. Constantly conflicting schedules meant that when one was coming, the other was going. They rarely saw each other for more than a quick kiss and a hasty, “There’s leftovers in the fridge. Finish them before the go off?” It wasn’t a perfect marriage, he’ll admit—but what marriage was? They both loved one another, cared for one another. That was more than worth it in his opinion.

Evie decided it wasn’t much of a marriage at all, though. What choice did he have then, but to agree? Still, despite the logical arguments and the assurances that neither one of them was to blame, signing the divorce papers had felt like giving up. 

Moving out had felt like failure.

A third drink assures that he doesn’t feel anything he doesn’t want to—which tonight impressively includes _everything_ , right down to the hollowness settled heavily in his chest and the bereavement that the absence of one stupid band of gold has left him with.

He doesn’t remember what he orders for his fourth drink, and doesn’t care.

With the sudden and unexpected diversion, his crew had found lodgings wherever they could on such short notice, which means Douglas has a bungalow all to himself, whilst everyone else fills up the vacancies of a hotel down the road. It’s a queer set-up, he’ll give the place that, a handful of mismatched houses thrown together on a lot of land. He suspects whoever built them thought the small number of separate villas would lend itself to feeling homey and quaint. Instead it only ends up coming across as a poorly-executed last ditch effort to make money by leeching off the dregs of tourism that happen to wander this far out. 

Fortunately, Douglas has enough alcohol in him that puzzling out whether this is all his own karma or simply ill-timed coincidence doesn’t matter. So long as his room has a mattress and an alarm, he’ll pass out and sort anything else in the morning.

But when he opens the door and flips on the light, he knows it will be a long time before he gets to sleep.

He’ll admit to drinking more than he probably should have, but it is certainly nowhere near enough to have the appearance of an unfamiliar woman in his room register as anything but odd, especially not when the clerk had assured him that he was the only guest and had the only room key.

There’s a pool of shadows at the foot of his bed that the light doesn’t quite reach, and she’s standing in the middle of it, dressed in silk and lace that clings to her curves and shows just enough skin to be enticing rather than obscene, all done up like a present that most certainly isn’t meant for him. Charcoal curls cascade around her shoulders, a striking contrast against cream-pale skin, which in the fringes of yellow lamplight looks temptingly soft. Her full lips are painted the same shade of carmine as the lacquer on her nails, bluntly cut and just long enough to be able to leave some spectacular marks if given half a chance. Her legs go on for miles and her eyes are rimmed with smoky liner and depthless enough to drown in.

There are a hundred different scenarios that could explain this and none of them good, but he doesn’t consider a single one of them.

His first thought is that she doesn’t look a thing like Evie.

His second thought, hissing at him from the last dwindling bit of sobriety in his mind, reminds him he shouldn’t be thinking about Evie at all.

Somehow, tonight, he doesn’t think that will be a chore.

“Hello,” he ventures. She may be stunning, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be cautious. After all, it’s the stunning ones you need to look out for. They’re always the ones who do the most damage. 

The smile she gives him is demure considering they’ve never met and she’s wearing next to nothing. The fact that she doesn’t seem to be startled or frightened by his presence speaks volumes. 

“Hi,” she says, her voice soft and unassuming. Innocent. Or it would be, if sneaking into someone else’s room in the middle of the night could ever be construed as innocent.

Still, he’s intrigued. He supposes that’s the point. You can’t unbalance someone who’s on their guard and he can’t fathom that this—whatever this is—is meant to serve any other purpose. 

The buzz of alcohol is still sitting pleasantly in his limbs, and it is easy—easier than it should be, easier than he ever thought it could be—to fall back on old habits and wear his charm like a second skin. The world could turn itself on its head, but at the end of the day, he would always have his wits and charisma to carry him through, and he’d proved long ago that those were the only things he really needed to survive.

He’d always done well in the face of adversity, and even when he hadn’t, well—he’d always been told he was a terribly good actor and he was certainly no stranger to pretending. If there’s a way to turn this all to his advantage, he’ll find it. 

So instead of baulking at the situation as he supposes anyone else in his position would do, he pours equal amounts of geniality and perplexity into his voice. “Not that this isn’t a thoroughly puzzling and yet alluring surprise,” he says, flashing her a disarming smile, “but at the risk of sounding rude, just how the hell exactly did you get in here? Is this some sort of complimentary service I wasn’t aware of?”

“Depends on the kind of services you _were_ aware of,” is her coy reply.

Definitely trouble, this one, he decides. It’s certainly good for him that he and trouble go hand in hand as often as not. Besides, he’s drunk and miserable and could use the distraction. 

She twists a bit, a subtle shift of her weight from foot to foot that draws his eyes to the cant of her hips, and his smile deepens. 

Oh, what a distraction she’ll be. 

“Did the management put you up to this?” he asks. “Creep into the guests’ rooms, bat your eyelashes prettily, and then when I’m not looking, take me for all I’m worth? I’m afraid you’re bang out of luck with me. Divorcees by virtue are revoltingly penniless. It’s a tragedy really.”

 _One that’s all your own doing, you great tit,_ he thinks. He tries not to dwell on the bitterness gnawing at the edge of his conscience. 

For a sliver of a moment something like sorrow flitters across her face, but she twists again and when she looks up her expression is full of cheerfully-tinged exasperation.

“I’m not here to rob you,” she tells him.

“Oh, aren’t you? What do you want, then?”

“What makes you think I want anything?”

“What about this should make me think you don’t?”

She sighs then, a mournful little exhalation full of disappointment. “I know your type,” she says. “You’re all bluster and no bite.” 

“You’re not exactly subtle yourself, my dear. You look like a woman with something to hide and you know what they say about secrets.”

A minute tilt of her head is her only acknowledgement. Still, it’s all he needs.

“They’re dangerous,” he says. 

He expects her to stiffen at the provocation, expects her to show some inkling of indignation at the accusation, but she gives no indication that anything he’s said has moved her in the slightest. 

So, he presses on. 

“Is this something you do for everyone who passes through?” he asks. There’s a sour note beginning to bleed into his words, cagey and defensive. The sudden discomfiture of smoldering anger alights and burns along his veins, cording his muscles tight enough to ache. Belatedly, he realizes he’s gearing himself up for a fight, one where there isn’t nor should be, and he doesn’t give a damn. “Awfully public spirited of you. But I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time. The only thing I want right now is sleep and believe it or not I can manage that on my own.”

She weathers his malediction in silence, her expression drawn inscrutably blank, not the tiniest bit unruffled, not the tiniest bit concerned. Her indifference makes it all the worse. 

“You look like a man who could use some company,” she says simply.

The words strike an unexpected cord in him, because it’s not a chat-up line, not the first hint of a seduction to use with pouted lips and a coquettish gaze through lowered lashes. Instead, it’s simple and played straight, but the most damning thing of all is that it’s completely true, the kind that pricks at one’s skin with pinpoint precision, buries itself uncomfortably deep and sets one’s teeth on edge. 

It’s the kind of naked exposure that has never sat well with Douglas.

It’s one thing for him to use this little tête-à-tête, however unconventional, to keep his thoughts occupied and channel all the things he would rather not feel into something useful. It’s quite another for her to stand there and effortlessly strip him bare without so much as a “by your leave.” To pretend as if she knows him, understands him. To pretends as if she _cares._

Douglas has never liked being on the back foot, never liked presenting a target because doing that inevitably meant someone would take a shot. Vulnerability lends itself to a tempting display and always attracts entirely the wrong sort of attention. Scars scream of weakness and he’s never been particular fond of airing his.

Mounting an offense is easy. There isn’t any other choice.

“I can’t honestly say I’ve ever seen your type,” he spits out. “Not outside of cheap noir novels or who aren’t skulking on street corners. If that’s your game, you might as well fold, because I haven’t any cash, nor a card to my name, and I’ve never found any sort of thrill in paying for company, as you so charmingly put it. So why don’t you do yourself a favor and make your exit before you embarrass yourself spectacularly?”

For the first time, she smiles and it unbalances him completely. Because it isn’t enticing or suggestive. Nor is it the collected cool of confidence and self-assured egotism. It’s pity, raw and unadulterated, and it makes his hackles rise. 

“Am I the one here embarrassing myself?” she asks quietly.

The distraction she presents loses all of its appeal in the sudden haze of red that clouds his vision.

He knows how to be intimidating, knows how to set his shoulders back to make his size more imposing than it actually is, knows how to use his height to loom and present an unspoken threat. He saw it enough growing up, how just the straightening of one’s spine could cow any semblance of defiance in someone else. It’s a stance maintained out of necessity and fear and it makes everything in him brittle and tremble. 

It shouldn’t be as easy as it is to cross the carpet to her, shouldn’t be satisfying to stare down his nose at her with narrowed eyes and clench his fists because if he doesn’t he will do something he will regret, something he will crucify himself for afterwards. He swore he would never be the kind of man who resorted to violent tantrums to prove a point, would never be the kind of scum who laid a hand on a woman because he was so riddled with insecurity he couldn’t handle rejection. 

With anger and resentment burning just under his skin, quickening his pulse and tunneling his vision, he’s suddenly aware just how very thin a line control is to walk. 

She doesn’t flinch from him, doesn’t take his presence as any more than posturing, and holds his gaze unwaveringly. He notes with a small, icy detachment, that only experience gives someone that kind of resolve in the face of unknown brutality. Dread is a familiar, leaden weight in his stomach which he ruthlessly ignores.

She tips her head back to look up at him, her dark hair falling away from her face and shoulders. That’s when he sees them and all the sustaining rage in him tamps down to embers and thins his blood to ice water. 

The marks roped around her throat are obscenely thick and discolored. Instinctively, he knows if he were to rest his hands over them they would mimic the press of his fingers. Marks like that aren’t made by chance, but with purposeful and wicked intent. 

His stomach rebels at the sight, nausea flooding through him and sending a cold sweat down his spine. 

Savagery doesn’t lend itself to restraint and he knows even before he looks that there is more. There are bruises to match on her wrists, ringing them like shackles, and when she tilts her head to one side, he catches an unmistakable glimpse of blood spider-webbing its way out from her hairline and across her forehead, just barely noticeably under the thick fringe over her eyes. 

The knowledge that someone has hurt her so thoroughly sparks an unsettling and righteous fury in him. 

The thought that he had been tempted to do more damage makes his gorge rise and the bitter taste of bile at the back of his throat burns like contrition.

“You’re bleeding,” he tells her, his voice thick and wavering. He gestures woodenly to her face.

She moves as if to blot at the spot with careful fingers, but stops halfway and simply shrugs. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

 _They’ll fade soon enough,_ he hears his mother say. _It’s fine. My own fault. I should have known better._

Her words and the echoing admission make it all worse, because he knows now, the same as he did then, just how wrong those words are. He knows brokenness when he sees it, and the all-consuming weight of helplessness through terrified inaction courses through him. He knows how denial sits and rots a person from the inside out and hates that even years later he still can’t leave it all behind. 

But he also knows the futility of coaxing others into action. It has all the usefulness of beating your head against a wall, and in the end, you’re lucky if you’ve only managed to drive yourself mad. That never stopped him from trying, though.

It doesn’t stop him from trying this time, either.

“You should go to hospital,” he says, low and evenly, willing every scrap of calm he can muster into his voice, into the line of his body. It’s the only thing he can offer, and in the scope of things it isn’t anything at all. 

When she only stares, he presses as much as he’s willing. “Or the police,” he says. He knows he’s pleading. The last sober and obdurately practical part of him can’t figure out why. 

“They can’t help me.”

Her acceptance is like hearing an executioner’s sentence. If she refuses help, if she doesn’t believe it will come, no amount of persuading will convince her otherwise. Some people don’t want to be saved. He wonders why then that others still bother to try and rescue them when they already know the outcome. 

He wonders if he’ll ever take his own damn advice and just stop caring. 

She smiles up at him and he knows he never will.

It’s not denial if you readily accept it as hopeless, is it?

“Let me, then,” he says, and gestures a hesitant hand at the blood on her face. 

The corners of her mouth quirk playfully. “Are you a doctor?”

“No,” he says. “But I wanted to be.” When he passes her to go into the en suite to hunt for the first aid kit, she doesn’t move to avoid him, just turns and watches curiously. 

When she teasingly asks, “Did they kick you out?” it drags a helpless laugh out of him.

“No,” he admits. “I did that myself.” He comes back and sits at the foot of the bed, balances the kit on his knees, and sorts through rolls of gauze and tubes of antiseptics. Busying himself makes him feel marginally less useless, that if he can do this it will somehow balance out all of his other glaring failures. “Stitching up people day in and day out isn’t as glamorous as the films make it out to be, believe it or not. If nothing else, it gets deadly dull very quickly. I found flying planes to be much more my thing. I get to look sharp and be clever and never get my hands dirty, so to speak.”

“Oh, a regular globe-trotter, huh? Aren’t I lucky?”

“In every conceivable way,” he smiles. “And even in some inconceivable.” 

She sits beside him without prompting, watching as he rips open a pack of antibacterial wipes and unfolds one, her ankles primly crossed and a hand balanced delicately on the mattress between them. He gets the distinct impression she’s humoring him and has been this whole time, that whatever he’s thought thus far is miles off and he won’t find the right end of things no matter how he tries. 

He turns towards her and she does the same, angling her face towards him obligingly. The easy trust in the movement stills him, and he thinks for just an instant that he is the one who should be afraid. 

He berates himself, swallows down the unease and concentrates on dabbing at the dried blood as gently as he possibly can. 

“What happened?” he asks, even though it feels like an intrusion, but the silence is suffocating and it’s the only thing he can think of. 

She doesn’t still under his hands as he expects her to. Instead, she only closes her eyes and tells him in a small, fragile voice, “I don’t know.”

His throat tightens and his chest aches and he distantly recognizes the pain is the first fingers of grief. “Whatever happened,” he tells her, and resolve gives iron-strength to his voice because, above all else, she must believe this. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She makes no reply, but the pall over them falls away, and he can breathe again. 

“You’re very kind,” she says when he cleans the last of the blood away. 

He gets up to replace the kit in the en suite and wash the stench of chemicals from his hands. “I’m just not cruel,” he replies. “There’s a difference.”

“And the one that means the most,” she says.

He pauses in the door to the en suite, suddenly finding himself without a ready and appropriately flippant reply. He doesn’t have time to think of one, because all at once she’s standing there in front of him, marred by someone else’s cruelty and somehow stronger for it.

She appraises him for a long moment in solemn contemplation, then lifts her face to him and plainly asks, “Will you do something for me?”

He doesn’t know what he could possibly have to offer her, but the only thing he says is, “I’ll try.”

She glides across the room to him, all purposefully poised grace and defiance dripping from every line of her body. The movement highlights her scars, and she seems to know this, and isn’t perturbed in the least.

He’s not entirely certain what he expected, but her slipping her hands along his arms to curl around his shoulders isn’t it, nor is the kiss she presses to his lips, soft and sweet and more appealing than it has any right to be. 

“Please,” she whispers as they share a breath.

Despite his best intentions, he splays his hands across her back, draws her closer and pours himself into another kiss. She melts in his grasp, tilts her head back and opens her mouth to him. When they finally break for breath, she nuzzles against the hinge of his jaw and drags her nails encouragingly down his shirt to fumble with the buttons. 

It’s clumsy as far as seductions go, but it’s exactly the kind of intimacy he misses. She’s warm and pliant under his hands, and that alone is enough to stem the hollowed-out loneliness settled marrow-deep within him.

He’s damning himself, he knows, scrawling another black mark on his record, but he hasn’t ever pretended to be virtuous in his thoughts and deeds. Innocence has never suited him terribly well and he’s never been a particularly good man. 

He doesn’t stop when she pulls his shirt from his shoulders, doesn’t sound a word of protest when she unthreads his belt from its loops and undoes the snap of his trousers. He doesn’t do anything but groan against her open mouth as she drags her fingers down his fly and palms the length of him. She squeezes, just enough to send white sparks of pleasure along his veins, and he drops his head to her shoulder and rocks into her grip. 

He breathes in the heavy scent of gardenias, tastes the salt of sea air on her skin, and it’s enough to remind him of exactly who she isn’t. 

None of it is enough to matter.

She guides them to the bed in a graceful tumble, capturing his mouth and pushes his trousers and pants down his hips. 

He undresses her with no finesse at all, mouths at her throat, cups her breasts in his palms, and settles heavily between her legs. It drags a delicious sigh from her and he can feel the heat of it against his temple. She rakes her fingers through his hair and curls her legs around his thighs to pull him flush against her.

He tries to pretend that somehow the advantage isn’t all hers. 

He never believes it for a second.

So, he takes her apart with nimble fingers and a clever tongue until she’s arching and writhing under his hands, until she scores hot lines of pleasure-pain down his back, presses open-mouthed kisses, hot and wet against his face, and moans with feverish abandon.

It’s something he can do well, he reasons as she nips at his jaw, wanting and being wanted, surrendering just long enough to stop the weight of the world from pressing in. It’s frantically chasing the edge of denial and praying to God he doesn’t ever lose. He’s never been strong enough to face the solitary bleakness of reconciliation. There are too many regrets he’ll never make up for, and he knows it. What happens when he finally stops running doesn’t merit thinking.

He is nothing if not resourceful and he always finds way to ensures he never has to.

“Please,” she breathes as she twines her arms around his neck. “Please, please…” It’s a broken litany, choked with desperation and need.

It’s absolution in the arms of a stranger and all he can think is, _How did it come to this?_

Eventually, he loses himself in her, caught up in the wet slide of flesh on flesh. The pressing need to submit to the swelling heat coiling in the pit of his belly burns through him, makes his breath catch and stutter in his lungs. He buries his face in soft curve of her neck, inhales her scent to steady and ground himself. Instead, the heady perfume of gardenias and musk make him dizzy and he groans, a helpless sound pulled from deep within his chest that he can’t quite manage to stifle. 

It doesn’t take long to fall into a rhythm after that, doesn’t take much for that rhythm to quicken and falter. She’s gone quiet underneath him, just a tiny hitch of breath with each thrust, and when he lifts his head, she meets his gaze with glassy, half-lidded eyes, dark and deep and hazed with pleasure. 

The sight is nearly enough to undo him. 

The shudder that trembles down his spine echoes in the arch of her hips, and he knows she’s close when her eyelids flutter shut and her toes curl against the backs of his calves. Instinct overtakes reason then, harder, faster, until he can feel himself unraveling at the seams. She gasps, a breath without sound that skates hotly across his ear, and clenches around him, fingers digging crescent half-moons into his shoulders and back.

That is enough to tip him over the edge, the wash of release flashing violently through him, clamping his jaw so tightly shut his teeth ache. She strokes him through the last of it, hands soft and soothing as she peppers gentle, sweet kisses against the side of his face, his ear, his neck.

His arms practically give out beneath him and he has just enough presence of mind to list to one side before he collapses entirely, eyes slammed shut and chest heaving as he tries to steady his breath. 

When the world finally bleeds back into focus and he opens his eyes again, the room is desolately dark and more than a little unsettling. He twists a bit on the sheets and finds her sprawled on the pillows beside him, her dark hair an inky spill against the linens.

The moonlight plays off her skin, the darkness drinks up her eyes, and for a breathless moment he is sharing his bed with a corpse. Blue-tinged paleness wreathes her lips, highlights the bruises on her wrists and the lurid press of fingerprints around her neck is unmistakable.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, pinning him with those dead eyes. 

He reaches out a hand to drag his fingers through her curls and pulls her close. He isn’t certain which one of them needs forgiveness now. It’s a riddle in the dark he doesn’t know how to solve and he doubts any of the answers are hiding themselves in the temptingly heavy lull of dream-shadows. 

He isn’t certain when holding her tucked against him and breathing in her scent turns to sleep, but all at once the darkness drops thickly around him and lays him out, open and vulnerable. 

Then he is gasping because the air is gone and in the midst of the fog of sleep he recognizes the calloused feel of fingers squeezing his throat. He fights to move his arms, struggles to get his feet under him enough to unseat the heavy press of the body over him, but all that earns him is a shove that cracks his head against the headboard. The sudden, sharp pain whites out his vision and drives away what little breath he has left. 

There are no words, no threats, and somehow the silence is more terrible than any amount of shouted fury. A hand leaves his throat to capture both his wrists and still any last feeble attempt at resistance. 

_I’m going to die,_ he thinks, and there isn’t a thing he can do to stop it.

The darkness gapes wide and the void swallows him whole.

~*~

Douglas jerks awake and flails against the sheets, hurling himself upright, and gasps as if he were drowning. 

Or being strangled.

His head swims and his body aches, but in the faint, greyness of dawn streaming in from the windows, he knows he is completely alone. He runs shaky hands over his face, breathes in the soothing daylight hours and wipes away the clinging scraps of nighttime horrors. Even still, he remembers the spectre of silk against his skin and the fresh scent of gardenias lingers on the sheets. 

The beginnings of a royal headache are clamoring for attention, crowding in at his temples and dully throbbing behind his eyes. He pulls his hands from his face and that’s when he sees them.

As he stares at the darkening bruises and the rising welts along his wrists, he decides that drinking himself to excess might not be the saving grace he had always thought it was. If nothing else, this proves that drowning his black moods in alcohol only leaves him with nightmares and he’s had enough of those to last a lifetime. He doesn’t need to add any more to his collection, especially not ones as vivid and terrifying as this.

Quitting drinking will be easy enough, he thinks. He can stop whenever he likes. After all, it’s not as though he has a problem. 

He repeats that to himself, even on the flight home. If his captain notices the haggard set to his face or the edges of bruises peeking out from his cuffs, he doesn’t mention it and neither does Douglas. 

He doesn’t dwell at all on what he lost before he blacked out. He knows all too well what can trigger recall, and he’s quite content to forget about the ghostly press of hands stealing his breath away.

He pretends everything is fine and the advantage is once again his.

~*~

_Comfort those who suffer,_  
watching late in pain;  
Those who plan some evil  
from their sin restrain. 

~*~

_Through the long night watches_  
may Thine angels spread  
their white wings above me,  
watching round my bed. 

~*~

_Honolulu HI, 2012_

The sky is velvet-dark, spattered with stars and enough brushstrokes of cloud to blot out the moon. The air smells of sea and salt; the hush of waves and foaming surf drifts quietly on the night breeze—if you close your eyes, you could be standing on the beach, with the water lapping gently at your toes. It’s relaxing, really. Idyllic and serene.

But whatever hopes Martin has for a good sleep die when he claps eyes on the hole Carolyn’s booked for them. 

It’s gutted and patched, positively on its legs. It’s a wonder it hasn’t been condemned, honestly. It doesn’t pose a _possible_ safety hazard, because only a blind man couldn’t see that it absolutely is one. The little beauty that remains is a memory, grey and peeling at the edges, a physical manifestation of what it is to give up. 

For some reason it’s the most depressing thing he’s ever seen.

Arthur, as ever, is positively giddy. 

“Oh, this is _brilliant!_ ” he exclaims, bouncing on his heels and simply vibrating with entirely too much pent-up energy. “I brought my camera and everything—they show up on cameras if you turn on the night-vision, don’t they? Or do you need those special cameras that show those funny, blotchy colors? And salt, we’ll definitely need salt—no, wait, I think that’s something different.”

“In the hopes of luring out some nighttime horror plagued with a sodium deficiency?” Douglas asks, eyeing the house and the ones beyond, wholly unimpressed. 

Arthur’s enthusiasm doesn’t flag in the slightest. “Not horror, no. That would be, well, _horrible._ Besides, all ghosts aren’t awful… Are they?” He poses the question tenuously to Martin, who can’t find it in him to do any more than shrug. 

“That theory, of course,” Douglas intones, “hinges quite strongly on ghosts being real in the first place.”

Arthur’s eyes go thoughtfully wide at that and he stills mid-bounce. “Aren’t they, though? But that’s why we have this whole place to ourselves, on account of it being haunted.”

“Of course, how silly of me. What other explanation could there be? It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the rot eating through every inch of this place.”

Carolyn’s brow gives a dangerous twitch and the line of her mouth tightens. 

Martin smiles despite himself. “The rot gives it character, if nothing else,” he adds innocently.

“Ah, yes,” Douglas agrees. “The overwhelming stench of decay straight out a film where the unsuspecting lodgers—that would be us—get murdered in their sleep by the local ne’er do well.”

Martin can’t quite stop the grin inching its way across his face. “I think that is the most cliché thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“It’s America, clichés runs rampant. I’m blending in.”

“Besides,” Martin elaborates. “It’s statistically more likely we’d die from prolonged mold exposure than as the victims of an ultraviolent serial murderer.”

“Serial murderer? Now, who’s being cliché?”

“If you were murdered it wouldn’t be happenstance,” Carolyn grumbles archly. “It would be Douglas’s karma come full circle.”

Martin turns to stare at her at a loss. “How does Douglas’s karma kill _me?_ ”

“It doesn’t. That would be your bad luck as an unfortunate bystander.”

“And you, Carolyn?” Douglas asks. “How do you meet your untimely end?”

“End?” she echoes incredulously. “Hah, one would think you’d know that answer by now. I don’t. I endure.”

Douglas only snorts. “Of course you do.”

Oblivious as always, Arthur drifts up the pavement ahead of them and cheerily calls, “Hey lady, hey lady, I’m sorry you had a bad day!”

For a long minute they all stare in bewildered silence—Arthur, at the houses that probably haven’t been occupied in a decade and everyone else at Arthur for being, well… _Arthur._

“Arthur,” Carolyn says finally, with the kind of infinite patient she reserves strictly for her son. “You remember that thing you said not two minutes ago about the four of us being the only ones here?”

“Yeah?”

“We still are.”

“I know that,” he says, as though it should have been obvious. “I was doing that chant thing, y’know, the one where you stand in front of the mirror in the dark and spin about? Well, that’s how you call the ghosts out.”

Martin blinks. “That’s Bloody Mary, isn’t it? Arthur, that’s not even the right phrase.”

“But that one doesn’t make any sense,” Arthur insists. “Because I definitely didn’t kill her baby-—that’s _horrible_ —and a really long time ago. And also really sad, so I thought I should say sorry.”

“Because apologizing for her having a bad day isn’t the understatement of the century,” Douglas mutters.

“And how do we even know she’s wearing white until we see her?”

“How do we even know that she is, in fact, a she?” Douglas offers.

“Oh, that’s a good point!”

Before Arthur can launch into another impromptu spirit summoning, Carolyn hooks a hand around his elbow and steers him towards one of the bungalows sitting down the path. The look she tosses Douglas’s way promises that if someone hasn’t smothered him in his sleep come morning, she’ll be only too happy to do the deed herself.

Douglas flashes her a smile that’s all teeth as he waves good night. “Happy hunting,” he calls. 

“She’s going to kill you one day,” Martin tells him in resigned exasperation, once Carolyn and Arthur have disappeared behind a stand of withered palms. “You’ll do something you think is clever, she’ll snap and pull her knives on you, and that will be that.”

“Ah, but that’s what I have you for, Captain.”

“I’m not going to defend you to Carolyn when she finally loses it.”

Douglas arches an imperious brow. “Who said anything about defending? No, I was thinking you’re just the right height to make a perfect human shield.”

All Martin can do is roll his eyes and hitch his bag up on his shoulder. Douglas would see anything else as blatant encouragement. Only when he glances over, Douglas’s gaze is fixed on the house in front of them, brows knitted in thought.

“You all right?” Martin hedges.

Douglas blinks after a moment and shakes his head as though to wipe his thoughts clean. “Fine,” he says. “Just… a bit of déjà vu, that’s all.”

Martin gives the house a cursory look and concedes, “I suppose once you’ve seen one rat’s nest, you seen them all.”

“I suppose so.” Even so, Douglas’s eyes linger on the house until it seems he has to purposely drag his gaze away. “Right,” he says, deliberately turning his back. “Good night, then. Don’t let the bed bugs—of which I am sure there are plenty—bite, or let any skulking spirits spook you.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Martin calls after him. “You said yourself they aren’t real.”

“Then there isn’t a thing for you to worry about,” Douglas responds, throwing a hand in farewell over his shoulder and disappears back behind the house to his own bungalow. 

Martin just snorts and starts up the steps. He finds his room easily enough, and whilst the outside may be falling to bits, the inside seems passable—in need of a thorough cleaning out, maybe, but he isn’t too terribly concerned about anything crashing down on his head whilst he sleeps.

He searches blindly for the light switch, fingers fumbling along the wall. It takes a moment for it to flicker on, and when it does the light is anemic at best, but it’s still enough to see by and he nearly jumps out of his skin.

Perched on the end of the bed is a woman wearing only her nightclothes—silk, he thinks, if the shimmer that clings to her curves is anything to go by. Her hair is dark and curls gently around shoulders the color of pale cream. She swivels her head towards him and he’s struck by the look of her, like a sepia-stained photograph, timeless and beyond memory. 

Simply put, she is beautiful. 

He realizes then that he’s still standing in the doorway, staring like a voyeur. The flush burns across his face like wildfire, flaming over his cheeks and working its way steadily down his neck. He averts his eyes with no subtlety at all, stumbling over his feet and his tongue as he tries to apologize and make a hasty exit all at once.

“I-I’m so sorry,” he stammers, eyes glued to the floor. “I d-didn’t know anyone was, um… I-I must have the wrong room, sorry.”

“You don’t,” she says, and the sound of her voice whips his head up before he can think better of it.

“I… don’t?”

She shakes her head slowly and when she fixes her eyes back on the wall opposite her, her gaze is distant and unfocused. He doesn’t need to be told she’s in distress—even Arthur couldn’t miss the sorrow settled in the lines of her shoulders or the haunted look in her eyes. The pain is old and dulled, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean it is any easier to deal with.

It doesn’t make it any easier to witness.

“They’re going to tear this place down,” she tells him, and her voice is so soft and small it clenches his heart. “It’s all I have left and they’re going to take it away.”

He hovers in the doorway, indecision clawing at him. This isn’t his problem, he tells himself. The only thing he has to worry about is getting a good night’s sleep for the flight back tomorrow. If he had any sort of brains at all, he would find somewhere else to rest, wheedle his way into Arthur’s room or even Douglas’s, and call it a night.

_And what would you tell them? That you saw someone in need and were too jittery and incompetent to do anything about it? Oh yes, well done you._

So, instead of fleeing—like a tiny, tremulous part of him begs him to—he takes a purposeful step into the room and shuts the door gently behind him. He slides his bag from his shoulders and drops it carefully on the floor, but makes no other move. Comfort, when offered, is on the recipient’s terms, and Martin is determined not to cross any bounds.

_A fair few have been crossed already, I think._

“You live here?” he asks haltingly, not because he’s curious, but simply because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she says, and to his complete horror, tears spill down her cheeks. 

“Oh, please don’t cry.” He knows it’s a stupid thing to say the moment he says it—no one cries because they particularly want to, not like this, and if they could stop themselves they wouldn’t be crying in the first place. All the same, he’s at a loss about what to do, because she’s in pain and he has no idea how to fix it. 

So, he crosses the room and kneels in front of her because standing makes him feel as though he’s looming and that kind of domineering isn’t going to help things at all. That seems to startle her and she blinks down at him, tears glistening on her lashes. Martin has never understood the appeal of fragility, but all at once he’s filled with the sudden overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and soothe away every last bit of sadness in her.

Without thinking, he tentatively reaches out and brushes his fingers over the hands she has folded over her knees, brushes his fingers over her wrists… and freezes.

There are bruises ringing each of them, thick and dark. He snatches his hand back as though he’s been burned. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells her a tad shakily. 

Through the shadow of her hair he can see the hint of more bruises around her neck. It’s the single most gruesome thing he’s ever seen and something in him breaks for her. She doesn’t meet his eyes, but she turns the insides of her wrists towards him, offering them to him imploringly. 

He holds his breath and draws a finger delicately along the soft skin of one, following the dip of tendons and tracing the faint, blue lines of her veins. Her eyes shutter close at the contact and his heart constricts with the familiar ache of desolation. He knows what it is to fight with loneliness, knows how the simple need for human contact can wear away at one’s will and become so all-consuming it drives out every other thought and leaves emptiness in its wake.

He knows what it’s like to want to give up just to make the pain stop.

So, he kneels and cradles her hands in his and hopes beyond hope that she doesn’t feel alone anymore.

It isn’t much, he knows, but it’s all he has.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, but it’s enough for his knees to ache and put a crick in his neck. Still, he doesn’t move until he feels her fingers tighten around his and pull. He lets her guide him to his feet, her hands still loosely clasped in his, lets her stand so she’s crowded between him and the end of the bed, and nothing about the sudden intimateness feels wrong.

Which means he inevitably makes a fool of himself.

“Martin,” he blurts and she blinks up at him. “M-my name. It’s… Martin.”

She stares at him for a long moment as though entirely unsure what to make of him, then lowers her eyes and whispers her name to him like a secret.

“Hello,” he says. He feels the sorrow slowly drain from her, trickling from their laced fingers, and it’s the most wondrous relief.

The look she gives him is so nakedly grateful it’s frankly staggering. She’s nearly of a height with him so it doesn’t take much for her to lean forward and press her face to the crook of his neck, her lips brushing against the thready thud of his pulse, her breath soft and hot against his skin. After a moment, she untangles her fingers from his and drapes her arms around his waist. It isn’t an advance (or, at least, not one that he’s seen before, not that there have been many). She’s soaking up their closeness, finding some comfort in it, and he knows it’s ridiculous but… he’s touched, so deeply gratified in a way he can’t even begin to explain, that by simply _being_ he’s done enough, done what was needed and hasn’t failed. 

He returns her embrace and breathes in the sweet scent of flowers in her hair. 

It’s terrifyingly freeing, doing the right thing. Because once you do, there are so very many ways for it to go all wrong. 

A while later when she pulls away and meets his gaze, he’d like to say that he could read something of her thoughts in her eyes, but the only conclusion he comes to is that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a shade of brown so dark before. That knowledge doesn’t at all prepare him for the kiss she presses to his lips, chaste and tender and wet with tears. 

So very, very wrong.

Gently as he can, he curls his hands around her shoulders and eases her away. He’s been on the wrong side of rejection more times than he’d like to admit, but with startling clarity he realizes that giving it is a hundred times worse. Hope is such a delicate, breakable thing, and something tells him he’s ripping the last of it away from her. 

All she says is, “Why?”

Because she’s upset. Because it’s taking advantage. Because this has nothing to do with attraction and reciprocity and everything to do with denial and distraction to ease the pain.

But the reasons sit heavy on his tongue and refuse to be voiced.

She takes his silence as indecision rather than dismissal, leans back against him again, and tucks her chin against his shoulder. 

“I don’t want to be alone,” she breathes.

He gives her shoulders what he hopes is a reassuring squeeze. “You’re not,” he says and enfolds her in another loose embrace.

When she speaks her voice is nearly inaudible. “Make me believe you.” It isn’t a challenge. It’s a plea.

It undoes him completely.

He let’s go of her with equal parts of reluctance and resolve, takes a deep, steadying breath, and settles himself on the edge of the bed to untie the laces of his shoes. He doesn’t look at her as he pulls his socks from his feet or when he fiddles open the buttons on his cuffs. He certainly doesn’t look at her when he straightens to undo his belt. With efficient, economical movements, he strips himself down to his vest and boxers and carefully lays his uniform on the chair in the corner. Then he wrestles the bedclothes back and slides beneath the sheets. 

He knows his face is tinged pink, can feel the heat blooming in his cheeks, but modesty had flown the coop the moment he stepped into the room. He stuffs down the embarrassment chewing at him—because being flustered won’t do him a bit of good—and wordlessly holds out his hand.

Any misgivings he has vanish entirely when she reaches out to take it. 

She climbs into bed and into his arms without any further prompting, nestles herself close against his side and lays her head on his shoulder. When she settles, he gingerly curls his arm around her and pulls the duvet up over them. 

They stay like that until the flush at last fades from his cheeks, all the tension in him drains, and he sinks into the mattress and the soothing solidity of another body against his. She has a hand resting over his stomach and he can feel his muscles shift under her palm with every breath, but rather than proving to be a profound distraction, it is instead a warm and comforting weight.

The quiet lingers and their breaths even out, soft and deep. He smooths his thumb over her shoulder and drifts.

Eventually, she stirs, a slow, idle stretch of her fingers. She curls and uncurls her them against his stomach, until finally he realizes that she is tracing the ribbed lines of his vest, scratching patterns onto the cotton. It’s a careless gesture, indolent even. He isn’t sure she’s aware she’s doing it at all.

Suddenly, sleep is so very far away.

He bares it all with quite a bit of stoic aplomb, he thinks, but all the cool composure and good intentions in the world can’t stop him feeling, and the first smoldering embers of arousal pool low and warm in the pit of his belly. 

Resolutely, he knots his fingers into the sheets, steels himself to the lazy brush of her hand and concentrates solely on his breathing.

It isn’t enough.

By the time he has the presence mind to stop her he’s already pathetically half-hard. When her hand skims low on his belly, he snatches it with a desperation that startles him, clutching at her fingers as he draws down an unsteady breath. She stills and lifts her head to curiously meet his eyes. 

She knows—she _has_ to, she can’t _not_ know—and the fact that _he_ knows she knows sears the mortification down to his marrow. This wasn’t what he had thought of when he’d offered to share his bed, the farthest thing from it, in fact. But he doesn’t suppose chivalrous motives are of any use when his own body conspires against him to prove him a liar. 

Humiliation floods through him, swift and white-hot, and squeezes his eyes shut in shameful silence.

After a moment, she shifts under the arm he still has wrapped around her— _Idiot!_ He curses himself. _Idiot idiot idiot!_ —and delicately pulls her hand from his. Just when he thinks the disgrace of it all is too much to bear, he feels the warm, dry brush of lips against his jaw, first once side, then the other. Then with sweet but purposeful surety, she cradles his face in her hands and presses kisses to his cheeks and nose, to his forehead and each of his eyelids…

Slowly, ever-so slowly, it is enough to coax his eyes open again. 

The first thing he sees is her smile, patient and understanding. 

It steals his breath away. 

She presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth and smooths his hair from his temples with her thumbs. He can’t stop himself from tightening his hand from where it has slipped to the small of her back. 

“It’s all right,” she tells him, and kisses the other corner of his mouth. 

“Is it, though?” Some small part of him tells him he shouldn’t want this, but the rest of him rebels and he doesn’t think he has the wherewithal to deny it any longer.

She drags her fingers dangerously low on his belly, just grazing the waistband of his shorts, and he knows he has his answer.

The kiss she gives him this time is firm and gradually the sweetness of it ebbs as she urges his lips apart with teasing little sweeps of her tongue. Her hands tug at the hem of his shirt and work their way underneath, sliding up the flat plane of his stomach, tracing the outline of his ribs with sweeps of her thumbs. 

Martin leans up into her touch, wraps his arm tight around her to pull her closer, and makes a low, strangled noise in the back of his throat when she pushes a leg between both of his to straddle his thigh. 

When they break for breath, she pulls back just enough to help him yank his vest up over his head and nips along the prominent jut of his collarbone until he moans. She strokes her hands up his sides, brushes over the sensitive peaks of his nipples, and scrapes her nails down his chest so he twists and whines against her mouth. It’s the most agonizingly pleasurable thing he’s felt in a long time. 

She snakes a hand down his belly to trail her fingers along the hard line of his prick and he arches into her touch with a breathless gasp. 

Second-most agonizingly pleasurable thing. 

Encouraged, she strokes him through his pants until he’s rocking up into her grip, writhing back against the sheets and struggling for breath. She sets up a rhythm, so good, but not enough, and kisses her way across his chest. It takes him a moment to realize, she’s kissing each of his freckles, and when he finally does the sound it drags from his is choked and utterly wrecked. 

His fingers slip against the silk over her hip, a fumbling attempt to ground himself and draw her closer. The sound that leaves his throat when she finally pulls away is pitiful at best, overwrought and wholly undignified. 

He can’t find it in himself to care. 

When she hooks a finger into either side of the waistband of his boxers and tugs meaningfully, he lifts his hips without a second thought and helps her push them down his legs and off the side of the bed. He has a moment to appreciate the fact that she hasn’t taken a stitch off yet, before she settles back against his side, tangles her leg over his to press closer still and curls her hand around his cock. 

Electricity sparks through him like a livewire and sizzles along his veins, and it leaves him helpless and writhing. She doesn’t stop her caresses, only times them to the arch of his hips and mouths delicately at his throat, runs her tongue over his pulse-point and nips at the freckles he knows are there. 

“Oh,” he gasps and can’t stop the tremors that rattle down his spine. He knots his fingers into the sheets until his knuckles ache. “Oh, oh…”

It’s an overwhelmingly devastating and exquisite sort of torture, singing in his blood and coiling fiercely in his gut. He’s desperate to catch the edge of it, surrender to the need and the hot slide of her hand. 

Just a little more, a little harder, a little faster…

In the end, it’s the tenderness she showers on him that takes him apart. 

She scatters soft, aimless kisses over his chest and the last threads of his self-restraint snap. His orgasm crashes over him, hard and fast, and he spills over her hand with a strangled cry.

When he finally comes back to himself his stomach is wet and sticky and his limbs are stone-heavy. He hasn’t quite caught his breath but the heavy lassitude flooding through him is more than enough to make up for it. Knuckles drag soothingly down his thigh and with a good deal of effort he pries his eyes open. 

“Thank you,” he pants. “Oh, thank you.”

For an alarming moment, he thinks she’s going to cry, but a second later the look vanishes as if it has never been, and she leans down to tangle her fingers in his hair and kiss him soundly. 

They kiss for what seems like hours, slow and sweet and marvelously intimate, and they part only long enough for her to undress. She straddles his hips, leans down so they are skin to skin, and continues the languid exploration of his mouth. He strokes his hands lazily along her thighs and her arms, quite content to touch and soak up the warmth of her body. 

Eventually, the gentleness of their kisses and caresses take on a hungrier edge and the heat of it leaves him wanting more. Arousal stirs lukewarm in his belly, simmers, and slowly but steadily, licks its way up his spine.

“My bag,” he breaths against her lips and flings a heavy hand in its direction. 

He’s never had occasion to think about how one is supposed to talk with someone else trying to coax their way into one’s mouth. It is surprisingly difficult, and really, terribly distracting. He catches her bottom lip in his teeth, kisses her, and tries again.

“My bag…” Another nipping kiss and he growls into it. “I have… We need…”

She hushes him with a kiss that leaves him gasping and quietly assures him they don’t need a thing. 

Later, as they lie tangled together on sweat-dampened sheets, he nuzzles her hair, breaths in the heady scent of gardenias and sweet, spring rain, and lets fatigue pull his eyelids shut. She snuggles into his embrace and traces idle patterns onto his skin with her fingertips, and the comfort of it settles thickly over him. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers in a voice weary with resignation. She’s so quiet he doesn’t know if the words are even meant for him. 

He tightens his hand reassuringly on her hip, lethargy leaving him too boneless and senseless to do anything else. She doesn’t stop her caresses and lays the gentlest of kisses on his chest, right over his heart. 

Sleep, when it comes, is dark and deep and drags him under by the throat. 

~*~

Douglas stares balefully at the alarm clock on the bedside table and scowls. 

He has never suffered insomnia with any terrible frequency but he certainly isn’t a stranger to it. He knows in this state, sleep is an elusive thing, and will only come to him in uncomfortable and restless snatches, which will only serve to make him ill-tempered and vile company come morning. 

So instead of lying in bed staring at the ceiling and counting each loathsome minute, he drags a dog-eared copy of _The Maltese Falcon_ from his flight bag, careworn and falling apart at the seams. He’s read and reread it so many times it’s a wonder he hasn’t memorized it by now. He opens to a spot a random, settling in for the long, sleepless haul.

The words sit as ink on the page and offer no escape. 

He tries anyway but to no avail, and after rereading the same page for more than an hour, he gives up, disgusted. 

He settles his back against the headboard and rubs irritably at his wrists which have begun to ache. The soreness lingers even after he massages them for what feels like days and he blames the island damp, the weight of it a stone that sits oppressively on his chest.

The scent of gardenias from outside is cloying, nauseating. 

When the first tentative streamers of dawn creep into the room, he is awake to greet them.

~*~

By seven, Douglas is more than ready to be up and gone. He knows he’s being entirely too keen when a sweep outside shows him no one but him is even awake. Still, he’s wired and packed, and there isn't money enough in the world to convince him to step foot back inside. 

He sits on the steps to Martin’s bungalow and waits.

By nine, he surprises Carolyn and Arthur as they wander up the path.

“You’re never up this early,” Carolyn says by way of greeting. “What have you done?”

“Not a thing,” he tells her. “I simply wanted to make certain I was on time for our flight back.”

She narrows her eyes at him suspiciously. “Since when have you ever operated on anyone’s time but your own? And though it would hardly be any skin off my back to strand you here, what makes you think _Martin_ would allow us to takeoff without you, considering the rigidness with which he sticks to the CAA’s god-awful regulations?”

Before Douglas can retort, Arthur comically casts about and asks, “Where is Skip, anyway? He’s usually up before any of us.”

That’s an out if ever Douglas has heard one and he climbs to his feet. “I’ll see what’s keeping Sir waiting then.”

“Oh, God. This is the orchids and the fish cakes all over again, isn’t it?” Carolyn takes a breath to stop herself. 

Arthur’s brow crinkles. “I don’t think it is, Mum. Your birthday’s not for three months.”

The only tell of annoyance is the tic of Carolyn’s brow. “If we get stopped by customs simply because of your own need to sate your ego and line your pockets by playing duty-free of the week, so help you, Douglas.”

“How little you know me,” he laments.

He leaves her glowering on the pavement and slips inside. 

The house is dark and the halls breezy, but it’s easy enough to find Martin’s room. He tries the knob, expecting it to stick, but it turns easily under his hand and swings open soundlessly.

The theatrics are not lost on him.

In the dimness he can make out Martin’s silhouette sprawled out on the bed, limbs heavy and clumsily spread in the way of someone in a dead sleep. He snuffles into his pillows at Douglas’s approach, curls his fingers into the suspiciously empty space beside him, and breaths a single word that sends a treacherous and discomfiting chill down Douglas’s spine. 

“Anna.”

He squashes the unease down with a shake of his head and purposely crosses the room to throw back the drapes. Light floods the room, chasing away the shadows and the pervasive sense of something “other” settling in the corners, which Douglas refuses to acknowledge. He knows before he turns that he will find bruises encircling each of Martin’s wrists and creeping down the line of his collarbone. 

Knowing doesn’t make seeing them any easier and sympathetic pain blooms feebly down his arms and across his chest. Cobwebs of recollection sitr, a gossamer touch at the edge of his consciousness. Then the pain is no longer empathy but memory, dulled and masked under the weight of passing years and denial, but still whole and aching and very much his.

He swallows down the sudden tightness in his throat, breaths out the anxiety coiling under his breastbone, and claps a heavy hand on Martin’s shoulder to shake him awake.

Martin lolls against the sheets a moment, buries himself in the duvet, clearly reluctant to forgo warm sheets and vivid dreams for the cold company of the waking world, but before the panic settles in, he cracks his eyes open with a groan and shies away from Douglas’s touch.

“Douglas?” he croaks finally and rolls onto his side to blink blearily up at him. “What are you doing in here?”

Douglas lays on the nonchalance, thick and mocking, even though he knows every bit of it will be entirely lost. After all, forcing believable affability is an actor’s most cherished talent.

“The question is, Captain, what are _you_ still doing in here? Loitering in bed and leaving poor GERTI waiting. Unless, of course, you were planning an extended layover and forgot to mention it.”

The fuzziness drains from Martin’s face all at once and he practically bolts upright, then scrambles awkwardly for the sheets when he realizes he’s naked beneath. The splotchy flush that spreads out over his cheeks and down his neck to his shoulders is nearly enough to make Douglas laugh.

“Sorry,” Martin says. “Sorry. I-I didn’t mean… Carolyn’s isn’t angry, is she? Because this wasn’t intentional, I promise. I didn’t think I was so tired last night but…” His gaze wanders down to his hands, sitting limply in his lap, and he lifts one to examine it. “God,” he breathes and touches the bruise on his wrist with careful fingers. “How the hell did I do this?”

“Rough night?” Douglas hedges.

Martin’s color deepens and he pins his eyes on the sheets. “I… Tell Carolyn I just need a few minutes to get ready, will you?”

Douglas takes the obvious dismissal in stride and heads for the door. He stops just at the threshold because he can’t help himself and when he does something he throws himself in headfirst. 

“Martin,” he asks. “Who’s Anna?”

The sharp intake of breath is all the answer Douglas needs.

“See you outside,” Douglas says. 

He doesn’t bother to convince himself he isn’t fleeing. He knows he is.

Fifteen minutes later, Martin joins them, hair damp and uniform the most unkempt Douglas has ever seen it. The flush, however, is gone from Martin’s cheeks and the cuffs of his shirt and jacket are pulled strategically low on his wrists.

“Oh, will wonders never cease,” Carolyn says at Martin’s approach. “Douglas is ready and eager for a flight and Martin is the one tarrying behind. It must be the first sign of the apocalypse.” 

“Oh, apocalypse!” Arthur echoes. “That reminds me. Skip, did you find any ghosts?” 

Anyone else would take the abrupt stiffening of Martin’s spine as confusion at Arthur’s non sequitur, but Douglas sees the uncomfortably telling twitch of Martin’s hands and knows better.

Martin’s mouth opens and closes soundlessly a few times, but before he can find his voice, Carolyn rolls her eyes and huffs out a mildly irritated breath. “Arthur, dear heart, if any ghosts are to be found today, they will be yours, Martin’s and Douglas’s, trust me.”

Arthur’s eyes go round and hopeful. “Wow,” he breathes. “That’s _brilliant!_ How will it happen?”

“Far away from me if there is any justice in the world,” Carolyn says. “Right. Come on, then. If I don’t get to enjoy any of the island’s delights, none of you do. Let’s go.”

Carolyn sweeps down the path and Arthur follows obediently behind.

“Lonely,” Martin blurts abruptly. 

Douglas swivels his head to him and arches an inquisitive and prompting brow.

The beginnings of another flush rise on Martin’s cheeks. “This place,” he explains. “It’s… lonely. Don’t you think? It’s not…” He takes a fortifying breath and plows on. “It’s like it’s hurting.”

In the daylight, the house and the ones beyond aren’t nearly so disconcerting and the icy unease Douglas had felt the night before is faint at best. 

But faint doesn’t mean nonexistent and Douglas has learnt when his instincts go on alert there’s a reason for it, even if he can’t figure out why. Especially, if he can’t figure out why.

“Yes,” he agrees. “She feels like she’s hurting.”

Martin doesn’t miss the change of pronouns and when he looks up his gaze is glassy, full of relief found in mutual understanding. He nods, straightens decisively, and hitches his bag up on his shoulder.

“Carolyn’s prickly already,” he says. “We shouldn’t keep her waiting. Knives, remember?”

“All too well,” Douglas replies. “But really that’s more your concern than mine. Human shield, remember?”

An inelegant snort as he walks away is Martin’s only answer.

Sentiment gives Douglas pause and he spares the house one last look.

“Hey lady, hey lady,” he says, feeling just slightly absurd. “I’m sorry you had a bad day.”

For an instant the scent of gardenias becomes overwhelming and the breeze on his skin feels like reparation. 

Ridiculous. 

Whether it’s forgiveness for the imagined or the dead, he supposes he can find it in himself to spare some. If nothing else, it’s repayment and he always squares his debts. 

Not having to pretend he’s has any sort of advantage is liberating.

He smiles and doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt when he doesn’t look back.

~*~

_When the morning wakens_  
then may I arise  
pure, and fresh, and sinless  
in Thy holy eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title cobbled together from Waiting For Godot and Krapp’s Last Tape & Embers.
> 
> “Now The Day Is Over” – Sabine Baring-Gould


End file.
